Holy Corruption Batman!

Geithner-led NY Fed told AIG to hide details about bank payouts

When Geithner ran the New York Fed, that organization directed AIG to hide details of its use of bailout funds to pay off banks:

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York, then led by Timothy Geithner, told American International Group Inc. to withhold details from the public about the bailed-out insurer’s payments to banks during the depths of the financial crisis, e-mails between the company and its regulator show.

AIG said in a draft of a regulatory filing that the insurer paid banks, which included Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Societe Generale SA, 100 cents on the dollar for credit-default swaps they bought from the firm. The New York Fed crossed out the reference, according to the e-mails, and AIG excluded the language when the filing was made public on Dec. 24, 2008. The e-mails were obtained by Representative Darrell Issa, ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The New York Fed took over negotiations between AIG and the banks in November 2008 as losses on the swaps, which were contracts tied to subprime home loans, threatened to swamp the insurer weeks after its taxpayer-funded rescue. The regulator decided that Goldman Sachs and more than a dozen banks would be fully repaid for $62.1 billion of the swaps, prompting lawmakers to call the AIG rescue a “backdoor bailout” of financial firms.

“It appears that the New York Fed deliberately pressured AIG to restrict and delay the disclosure of important information,” said Issa, a California Republican. Taxpayers “deserve full and complete disclosure under our nation’s securities laws, not the withholding of politically inconvenient information.” President Barack Obama selected Geithner as Treasury secretary, a post he took last year.


Can we send him to prison yet? Geesh!

Why is Geithner refusing to release TARP documents?

From the Examiner

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is the reason Obama administration is still refusing to release Bush-era documents about the massive government bailout, says Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton. “Their guy [Geithner] was involved in this last year, and now he’s running Treasury.”

Judicial Watch filed two Freedom of Information lawsuits against the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve, both of which have ignored dozens of months-old FOIA requests.

“We are now more than a year and trillions of dollars into the government bailout and answers are in short supply. What was Congress told about the so-called financial crisis and who was lobbying the Fed for taxpayer cash? The taxpayers are p
aying for this bailout and they deserve to know the truth,” Fitton said.

Judicial Watch is specifically requesting records pertaining to a Sept. 18, 2008 congressional briefing on the financial crisis attended by then Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senators Charles Schumer, D-NY, Chris Dodd, D-CT, and Richard Shelby, R-AL.

“That’s when they came in and said the sky is falling and laid out the worst-case scenario if TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) was not passed,” Fitton told The Examiner. “I suppose there was a lot of misinformation and threats issued at this meeting that scared the wits out of Congress.”

Judicial Watch is also seeking access to all the Fed’s visitor logs from August 2007 to the present.